Transportable Array Seismic Station on the East Coast
February 17, 2012 | National Science Foundation
“Yulee, Florida. Not a place one usually thinks of as an Earthquake Epicenter. But this swampland not far from the Georgia state line is now home to a state-of-the-art seismic station known as 457A.” Quoted from the NSF press release. |
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IODP/USIO, Jennifer Magnusson
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Microbes Deep in the Oceanic Crust
January 12, 2012 | National Science Foundation
“Of all the habitable parts of our planet, one ecosystem still remains largely unexplored and unknown to science: the igneous ocean crust. While scientists have estimated that microbes living in deep ocean sediments may represent as much as one-third of Earth’s total biomass, the habitable portion of the rocky ocean crust may be 10 times as great.” |
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Behavior of Iron in Earth’s Core
January 5, 2012 | Caltech
“While it has been known for many years that iron is the main element in the core, many questions have remained about just how iron behaves under the conditions found deep in the Earth. Now, a team led by mineral-physics researchers at Caltech has honed in on those behaviors by conducting extremely high-pressure experiments on the element.” Quote from the Caltech press release. |
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What Happens to Metals at High Temperatures and Pressures?
December 20, 2011 | Carnegie Institution for Science
The crushing pressures and intense temperatures in Earth’s deep interior squeeze atoms and electrons so closely together that they interact very differently. |
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Earth is Overdue for a Magnetic Reversal
November 30, 2011 | NASA
NASA has a new article that explains that over the past 20 million years magnetic reversals have occurred every 200,000 to 300,000 years but it has been more than twice that long since the last reversal. |
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How Old is Earth’s Inner Core?
November 21, 2011 | Michigan Tech
Researchers at Michigan Tech, the University of Rochester and Yale University have determined that Earth’s core could be at least 1.2 billion years older than previously thought. |
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What Caused the Oklahoma Earthquakes?
November 6, 2011 | News on 6
In this video, Dr. Bryan Tapp, a structural geologist at the University of Tulsa explains what he believes caused Saturday’s M5.6 earthquake in Oklahoma – it wasn’t hydraulic fracturing. |
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Seismic Waves from a Giant Meteorite Impact
October 24, 2011 | Princeton
Princeton University researchers have produced a model of how seismic waves would spread across and within the Earth after the impact of a giant meteorite.
Related article: Impactites, the rocks produced by meteorite impacts. |
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Plate Tectonics and Geomagnetic Reversals
October 24, 2011 | Highly Allochthonous
Chris Rowan has an interesting post on his Highly Allochthonous blog titled: Does plate tectonics control magnetic reversals?. |
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Maps: Age of the Ocean Floor
October 17, 2011 | NOAA
NOAA has a webpage that links to a large number of maps, each showing the age of the ocean floor in a different format. A great resource for teaching, publishing and research. |
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The Origin of Gases in Earth’s Interior
September 28, 2011 | The University of Melbourne
“An international team of scientists has provided new insights into the processes behind the evolution of the planet by demonstrating how salty water and gases transfer from the atmosphere into the Earth’s interior.” Quoted form the University of Melborne news release. |
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Gold and Other Precious Metals from Meteorites?
September 14, 2011 | University of Bristol
“Ultra high precision analyses of some of the oldest rock samples on Earth by researchers at the University of Bristol provides clear evidence that the planet’s accessible reserves of precious metals are the result of a bombardment of meteorites more than 200 million years after the Earth was formed.” Quoted from the University of Bristol news release. |
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Can Earthquakes Be Predicted?
September 5, 2011 | ABC News
An article on the ABC News website explores the topic of earthquake prediction. Most earthquake researchers remain doubtful that accurate predictions will be possible. |
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The Mysteries of Deep Earth Carbon
September 5, 2011 | American Chemical Society
The American Chemical Society has an article about the Deep Carbon Observatory, a research effort to study Earth’s deep carbon cycle, and how DCO research can apply to energy, manufacturing, biology and even astronomy. |
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Video: Virginia Earthquake Waves Crossing the USArray
August 24, 2011 | IRIS
You can watch an animation of the seismic waves crossing the USArray seismic network in this video on the IRIS website. |
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El Mayor–Cucapah Earthquake Fault Patterns
August 16, 2011 | NASA
“Like scars that remain on the skin long after a wound has healed, earthquake fault lines can be traced on Earth’s surface long after their initial rupture. Typically, this line of intersection is more complicated at the surface than at depth. But a new study of the April 4, 2010, El Mayor–Cucapah earthquake in Baja California, Mexico, reveals a reversal of this trend. Superficially, the fault involved in the magnitude 7.2 earthquake appeared to be straight, but at depth, it’s warped and complicated.” Quoted from the NASA press release.
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Flood Basalts Contain Traces of Earth’s Primitive Mantle
August 3, 2011 | Carnegie Institution for Science
“New research from Matthew Jackson and Richard Carlson proposes that the remnants (flood basalts) of six of the largest volcanic events of the past 250 million years contain traces of the ancient Earth’s primitive mantle—which existed before the largely differentiated mantle of today—offering clues to the geochemical history of the planet.” Quoted from the Carnegie Institution for Science news release. |
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Diamond Inclusions Tell When Continents Started Colliding
July 26, 2011 | Carnegie Institution for Science
“Researchers analyzed data from the literature of over 4,000 of these mineral inclusions to find that continents started the cycle of breaking apart, drifting, and colliding about 3 billion years ago.” Quoted from the Carnegie Institution for Science press release. |
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What Keeps the Earth’s Interior Hot?
July 19, 2011 | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
“Geologists have used temperature measurements from more than 20,000 boreholes around the world to estimate that some 44 terawatts (44 trillion watts) of heat continually flow from Earth’s interior into space. Where does it come from?” Quoted from the Lawrence Berkeley National laboratory news release. |
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Drilling Through Hard Rock in the Oceanic Crust
July 1, 2011 | Integrated Ocean Drilling Program
“Scientists and drillers recovered a remarkable suite of heat-tempered basalts that provide a detailed picture of the rarely seen boundary between magma and seawater. These samples were collected during a return to ODP Hole 1256D, one of the deepest “hard rock” penetration sites of scientific ocean drilling.” Quoted from the IODP press release. |
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